Andrea Palladio · The First Book
Chapter XXIX. Of Roofs
THE walls being raised up to their summit, the vaults made, the joysts of the floors laid, the stair-cases, and all those things accommodated of which mention has been made before, it is necessary to make the roof; which embracing every part of the fabrick, and with its weight pressing equally upon the walls, is a kind of a ligament to the whole work, and besides defending the inhabitants from rain, snow, the scorching sun, and moisture of the night, it is no finall assistance to the fabrick, in casting off the water from the walls when it rains, which altho’ they may seem to be but of little prejudice, are, nevertheless, in time the cause of great damages.
Our forefathers (as may be read in Vitruvius) used to make the roofs of their habinations flat; but perceiving that they were not sheltered from rain, compelled by necessity, began to make them ridged, or raised in the middle.
These ridges ought to be made higher or lower, according to the regions where one builds; therefore in Germany, by reason of the great quantity of snow that falls there, the roofs are made very acute, and covered with shingles, which are small pieces of boards, or with very thin tiles; which roofs, if they were otherwise made, would be destroyed by the weight of the snow: But we that live in temperate regions, ought to chuse that height which makes a roof appear agreeable and with a beautiful form, and that easily carries off the rain.
THEREFORE the breadth of the place to be roofed, must be divided into nine parts, and two given to the height of the ridge; for if it is made with a fourth of the breadth, the roof will be too steep, whereby the tiles will be fastened with great difficulty; and if a fifth is given, it will be too flat, and therefore the tiles and shingles would be very much charged when the snows fall
Gutters are usually made round the houses, into which the water falling from the tiles, is by spouts thrown away a great distance from the walls: these ought to have a foot and a half of wall over them, which, besides holding them firm, will defend the timber of the roof from receiving damage in any part from the water,
THERE are various manners of disposing the timber of the roofs; but when the middle walls support the beams, they are very easily accommodated; which method pleaseth me very much, because the out-walls do not bear so much weight, and altho’ the head of some beam should rot, the roof is notwithstanding in no danger.
The END of the FIRST BOOK.
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Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.